More hand coloured polymer plate etching

Bobcats

etching with hand colouring

B. Holden 2014 ©

In my last post I featured a photo I had taken of a pair of Bobcats and exposed as a grayscale inkjet transparency positive onto a polymer plate. The plate was developed, the surface hardened permanently, had ink wiped onto it's surface and was printed into a white cotton rag paper.
I had some time this past weekend to sit down and apply hand colouring into the print. This was accomplished using a bit of water thinned Daler-Rowney liquid acrylic inks and brush in layers of washes. I am pleased with the overall results. It is pretty close to the original colour photo.

Bee and Fireweed 

etching with hand colour

B. Holden  2014 ©

The photo above is a small polymer plate etching printed on rag paper that has been hand coloured. It is a close up study of a honey bee on the blossom of Fireweed, a plant that is quite common here in Northwestern Ontario along roadsides and in fields from mid July until Sept.

This began as a pen and ink sketch made onto wet media Duralar plastic film. I added washes of black tusche ink for a little tonal variation.

The plate was pre-exposed to an aquatint screen and then I lay the positive over top and exposed it for an equal amount of time. I developed the plate in a tray a water and then hardened the plate surface with UV. The photos below show the positive artwork on film and the resulting print made using Caligo carbon black safewash etching ink onto Maidstone 250 gm cotton rag paper.

I taped the print to a thin mdf board with gum adhesive butchers tape.  Colour was added using washes of several Windsor-Newton watercolours followed by washes of Daler-Rowney acrylic inks.